PRESSURE is mounting on Justice Minister Alan Shatter to establish an independent inquiry into the murder of Fr Niall Molloy as fresh claims of garda failings in the case emerge.
The Irish Independent
has learned that officers failed to investigate a fraudulent insurance
claim on a policy, held by the popular Roscommon priest, which was made
just weeks after his brutal killing in July 1985.
Today in
the Seanad, Senator John Whelan will call on Minister Shatter to
establish an immediate commission of inquiry into what he described as a
"sordid cover-up" perpetrated by several institutions of the state.
Yesterday, Deputy Finian McGrath
called on the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice to instigate an
independent inquiry into the case 'as a matter of urgency'.
Fr
Molloy (52) was battered to death in the mansion of his friends Therese
and Richard Flynn in Clara, Co Offaly, after seeking the return of a
large sum of money he had lent to Mr Flynn.
The post
mortem found that the cleric died as a result of several blows to the
head.
Medical evidence shows that he lay injured for up to six hours
before the authorities were called, and that his life could have been
saved.
The murder occurred following a party, the day
after the society wedding of the Flynn's daughter Maureen and Ralph
Parkes, a businessman from a well-known Fianna Fail family.
Richard Flynn was acquitted of manslaughter by Justice Frank Roe after one of the most controversial trials of the 1980s.
It
later emerged that the judge knew the parties in the case through
horses and wrote to the DPP Eamonn Barnes in advance of the trial.
In the midlands, another individual, not Richard Flynn, is widely believed to have murdered the priest.
Four
weeks after the killing, an attempt was made to cash in an insurance
policy belonging to Fr Molloy. The claim form falsely named Therese and
Richard Flynn as the priest's sister and brother-in-law but neither of
them was related to him.
The insurance firm, the Combined
Insurance Company of Ireland, made several demands for a death
certificate and other relevant documents but this paperwork was not
forthcoming.
Speaking for the first time, the insurance
company assessor who handled the case has revealed that the fake claim
was not investigated by the Gardai.
Mr
Michael Taylor spoke to this newspaper, which has conducted a two-year
investigation into the murder, and said he was 'very surprised' that
officers did not question him about the claim when details of it emerged
in the media in 1988.
"There was no Garda
investigation into anything to do with the claim or who made it, from
what I know, and it would have been inconceivable for an investigation
to have happened without my knowing it," he said.
"You
had an attempt to make a fraudulent insurance claim following a violent
death. This should have been thoroughly addressed by the Gardai. If the
right questions had been asked by them, and consistently asked, answers
would have been forthcoming. I know now that I am one of
just countless witnesses with important evidence who were not
interviewed after the murder. I should have been interviewed at the very
least and asked to make a statement but I never was."
When the Molloy case was reopened by the Gardai in 2010, as a result of an Irish Independent investigation, Mr Taylor's details were given to officers from the Serious Crime Review Team by the Molloy family.
Following
that, officers interviewed Mr Taylor, who no longer works for the
insurance firm, but he was disappointed following his meeting with them.
"In my opinion, I didn't feel any sense of urgency even this time around," he said. "I would have expected more tenacity on their part given that the Molloy family have waited so long for justice."
The
new revelations add to the litany of errors and inconsistencies about
the Garda handling of the Molloy case, including the contamination of
vital evidence by detectives and puzzling statements given by them.
For
almost a year, Commissioner Martin Callinan has refused to answer
claims by crime writer Paul Williams that detectives dropped charges
against gangland boss John Traynor in exchange for the stolen Molloy
file.
In 1987, Traynor's associate Martin Cahill, 'The General', stole the Molloy police file from the DPP's office.
It
contained sensitive information, including the Roe letters, which
powerful figures did not want in the public domain. Cahill planned to
use it as a means of embarrassing the State.
Murdered journalist Veronica Guerin
first wrote about the Garda deal in 1994 in the Sunday Independent.
In
the same week, two bullets were fired into her home seconds after she
had walked out of the room to put her five-year-old son to bed.
Speaking last night, Laois-Offaly Labour Senator John Whelan said: "I
am seriously disturbed at the mounting volume of significant new
evidence emerging in relation to the brutal murder of Fr Niall Molloy,
which has been largely unearthed by the Irish Independent. It
clearly warrants the immediate establishment of an independent inquiry
into the circumstances of his death and the subsequent cover-up. The
Gardai and others have serious questions to answer about this case and
the manner in which it has been grossly mishandled. I am
calling on the Cabinet now to address the growing public disquiet around
what can only be described as the countless sinister elements in this
terrible case."